A 'funnel district' forms in Ferndale as students exercise school choice

Every school day hundreds of kids from Detroit travel up Woodward and many other routes on their way to Ferndale’s schools. They don't need to move to go to these schools.

Ferndale has wooed Detroit students, exercising their ability to educate students from other districts under Michigan’s "schools of choice" policy.

The district has two high schools that cater almost exclusively to students from Detroit.

One of them, University High, has 426 students only seven of whom come from Ferndale.

The school system has been called a "funnel district" because of traffic in and out of the district. Kids coming in from Detroit and some suburbs like Oak Park and Hazel Park make up one end of the funnel.

The other end of the funnel is made up of kids leaving Ferndale for suburbs a little farther out.

You can learn more about how this got started and the financial and educational consequences of it on our State of Opportunitypage.

This story is the first in our week-long series looking at how the neighborhood school and education in metro Detroit has changed over the past few decades.

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Next week, Sarah Alvarez from our State of Opportunity team will explore the long shadow of a busing and integration case 40 years ago, and the way the outcome fundamentally altered the notion of a neighborhood school for students in Detroit and many communities throughout the metro area.

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Listen to an interview with Sarah Alvarez and our All Things Considered host, Jennifer White.

Nov. 19, 2007Kaomi GoetzState and local schools of choice programs are affecting large, urban school districts, but opinions differ on whether that's good or bad.

Michigan created the schools of choice program in 1996 to give parents more options for their children's education. The program allowed parents to register their child in a neighboring school district without having to live there. But critics say school choice is decimating the state's large, urban districts.

Since taking office Governor Snyder has proposed many new education reform proposals, including mandatory Schools of Choice, which would allow students throughout the state to attend schools outside of their district.

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In this weeks political roundup we take a look at Schools of Choice with Susan Demas, political analyst for Michigan Information and Research Service, and Ken Sikkema, former Senate Majority Leader and senior policy fellow for Public Sector Consultants.

Opposition is mounting to a proposed requirement that all school districts in Michigan accept students from outside their borders. It’s part of Governor Snyder’s education reform plan. Legislation could be introduced as early as today.